Robert Baden-Powell Quotes on Man (8 Quotes)

I have over and over again explained that the purpose of the Boy Scout and Girl Guide Movement is to build men and women as citizens endowed with the three H's namely, Health, Happiness and Helpfulness. The man or woman who succeeds in developing these three attributes has secured the main steps to success this Life.

Possibly the best suggestion in condensed form, as to how to live, was given by my old Headmaster, Dr. Haig Brown, in 1904, when he wrote his Recipe for Old Age. A diet moderate and spare, Freedom from base financial care, Abundant work and little leisure, A love of duty more than pleasure, An even and contented mind In charity with all mankind, Some thoughts too sacred for display In the broad light of common day, A peaceful home, a loving wife, Children, who are a crown of life These lengthen out the years of man Beyond the Psalmist's narrow span.

The great thing that strikes you on looking back is how quickly you have comehow very brief is the span of life on this earth. The warning that one would give, therefore, is that it is well not to fritter it away on things that don't count in the end nor on the other hand is it good to take life too seriously as some seem to do. Make it a happy life while you have it. That is where success is possible to every man.

Mind you, I have had in my sojourn on earth as good a time of it as any man, so I can speak with some knowledge. A writer in the Manchester Guardian who is unknown to me lately described me as 'the richest man in the world.' That sounds a pretty big order, but when I come to think it out I believe he is not far wrong. A rich man is not necessarily a man with a whole pot of money but a man who is really happy. And I am that.

Young men, of course, don't want to be guided by old back numbers, but at the same time I know that in my own case I gained a lot by studying the characters of the chiefs under whom I served from time to time. Lord Wolseley, for instance, said 'Use your common sense rather than book instructions.'

After forming a cadet corps of boys for assisting as noncombatants during a military campaign in 1900 We then made the discovery that boys, when trusted and relied on, were just as capable and reliable as men.

'Softly, softly, catchee monkey,' is the West African rendering of a very valuable precept. An awful lot of men fail through lack of patient persistence.

I have known lots of millionaires who were not happy men they had not got all they wanted and therefore had failed to find success in life. A Singalese proverb says 'He who is happy is rich, but it does not follow that he who is rich is happy.' The really rich man is the man who has fewest wants.